


A Self-Destructive Streak

by yikesola



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M, Power Outage, phil is not allergic to cats in this au bc i make the rules, regular jobs au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 08:01:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17362118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikesola/pseuds/yikesola
Summary: Whenever Phil saw his neighbour, by the mailboxes or in the laundry room, he’d nod in the way one nods to a neighbour, but never had the courage for more. Then one Wednesday brought a windstorm, and an old tree up the road tangled in the power lines.An au fic about drinking in the dark with a stranger and hesitation.





	A Self-Destructive Streak

_The scariest moment is always just before you start_ … Phil Lester rolled the cadence of that line over his tongue.

The August afternoon was sweltering. Phil sat reading on his cramped balcony, ignoring the noise of the city below him. He was pouring over his new copy of Stephen King’s _On Writing_ and revelling in the reality of that particular line.

Looking away from the page, he saw Dan Howell walking on the street three stories below him. They were neighbours, living across the hall from one another in studio flats in a building that was too expensive considering its age and proximity to Strangeways Prison. This building was the first place either of them was living on their own— no parents, no flatmates, no uni halls— which was obvious from the general clutter in both their flats, the scarcity with which their refrigerators were stocked, and the chaotic hours they both kept.

They were the only ones who seemed to ever leave. They could hear the other tenants, and smell their dinners cooking, but Dan was the only person Phil ever saw. And when he did see him, by the mailboxes or in the laundry room, Phil always felt inexplicably tongue-tied. So he’d nod in the way one nods to a neighbour, but never had the courage for more.

Then one Wednesday brought a windstorm, and an old tree up the road tangled in the power lines.

*

The glint of Phil’s glasses was caught by Dan’s flashlight. He was carrying two heavy boxes in his arms when the lights flickered, then faded, then went out entirely. He shuffled a few steps in the impenetrably dark hallway until his foot caught a crease in the rug and the boxes fell from his arms and he yelped.

It was the yelp that drew Dan from his apartment; he later told Phil it sounded like someone had stomped on the paw of a sleeping golden retriever.

“You just had that ready?” Phil pointed to the flashlight as Dan helped him up. It was long and industrial and must’ve weighed as much as a dang toaster.

“I like to read in bed,” he said, as though that settled it.

They fumbled into Phil’s apartment together, each wrestling with the boxes and trying to limit the damage done to them, offering “thank you” and “no problem” and other helpful hollow nothings. Dan placed the flat-based bottom of the flashlight on Phil’s coffee table, and the circle of light on the cracked ceiling gave the room an outline and a hint of visibility, even if it wasn’t much.

“Thank you again,” Phil said, tucking his hands in his pockets, out of breath and surprised that he was out of breath.

“If I were a bellhop, I’d ask for a hell of a tip.”

“But you aren’t a bellhop.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You just told me you aren’t. You said ‘if’ _if_ you were a bellhop.”

Dan smiled a slow smile that took a little while to get to the corners of his mouth, and seemed to take even longer in the dim haze from the flashlight. A smile that revealed two deep dimples that in the low light looked like caverns. “You got me there.”

It was nice, familiar, the very specific type of familiarity that can only happen with a very specific type of stranger. Phil didn’t want to see it run dry; he wanted to soak in it as long as he could.

His cat, Lavender, crumpled some grocery bags on the kitchen counter. “You wanna stick around?” he asked Dan. He almost made some joke about how he didn’t have a flashlight of his own, but didn’t have the nerve to imply, even as a joke, that he was using Dan. “I got some dandelion wine,” he offered.

“Never had it,” Dan said, “but sure, yeah, sounds great.”

“My family makes it, over on the Isle of Man,” he said, tiptoeing out of the flashlight’s coverage and towards the cabinets where he kept his stemless wineglasses. “Old family recipe.”

Dan sat in the old wingback chair, which was half out of the flashlight’s coverage, and lifted the windowpane up about halfway. Phil’s apartment was tucked in the lee of the building, so the rain didn’t spatter inside.

The open window was quite a relief, banishing August’s stuffiness and the static electricity that seemed to be hanging in the air.

Phil was grateful for Dan’s ability to claim the wingback chair as though it were familiar, to be already relaxed, even if they were strangers. He wasn’t about to question it, even if it had no root or reason.

He threw off his rain-soaked denim jacket, kicked off his mud-squelched boots, and ran his fingers through his hair hoping to salvage what he could of his wet and drooping quiff. 

He gave Dan a glass of the promised drink and his grandmother’s mantra for it played in his head: dandelion wine is rare in its variety, rare in its transcendence. Constant in its confidence. “You never know where you stand with dandelion wine, but dandelion wine always knows where it stands with you,” Phil said with a laugh, sitting cross-legged on his bed.

They were quiet for a moment, drinking the wine and listening to the wind rattling outside. Phil indulged in his first proper look at Dan. He watched the way the shadows and the flashlight’s yellow haze worked with his curly hair to look painted, watched the way he reached up to fiddle with the silver hoop in his ear after a few sips.

“I don’t know anything about you,” Dan said, breaking the silence that had settled between them. He said it like an afterthought.

“Sure you do,” Phil laughed. But then he fished for an example and couldn’t think of one.

“I mean, we’ve established I’m not a bellhop. What’s something you aren’t?”

“I’m not a bellhop either.” The bellhop bit was stretching thin, but they both seemed to be waiting for permission— the permission to share camaraderie with someone you share no past with, the future not even being considered, and the present being all that’s asked for. The permission they wouldn’t actually ask for due to the rules of polite society or our ingrained discomfort with unearned intimacy, but which they wanted all the same.

“You like the wine?” Phil asked. “You can be honest.”

“I’m always honest,” Dan smiled, “and it’s delicious.”

“I don’t have the energy to always be honest,” Phil admitted. He tapped the broad plane of his nails against his wineglass. Dan was gracious enough not to challenge him.

“Let’s take this chance to get to know everything. Anything. Like we’re in the _Twilight Zone_ , with the power out and the storm going,” Dan said.

“Like the show or the place?”

“Either, both,” Dan laughed. “My brother and I used to make blanket forts during storms, and while we waited them out we’d pretend we were in _Twilight Zone_ where nothing really counts because it isn’t ever real. It was like the only time we ever got along really.”

“Are you trying to tell me you’re afraid of thunder?” Phil hoped he sounded teasing, not mocking. New friendships can feel like a minefield of faux pas.

“Not exactly,” he nodded very slowly. “More like afraid of the dark. But still, wouldn’t it be more fun to wait out the storm with company?”

“Guess so,” Phil said with a smile that proved he had never intended not to take Dan up on the offer.

They both settled in. Their smiles in the dim light had a wicked tinge; they looked impish and sipped their wine.

“Again, delicious,” Dan held his empty glass out in front of him, “but I’m itching for something stronger. I have some Malibu if you think we should just get blind drunk and spill some sleepover-style secrets.” Phil thought the alliteration should’ve stumbled over Dan’s tongue, but he managed alright.

There was something insincere about their situation that felt enticing: planning, deciding, intending to reveal the depths of your heart. People don’t just do that. Sometimes their depths get spilt by accident, sometimes they get spilt with prodding.

“Oh come on,” Dan pretended to pout when Phil took too long to answer, “I have a largely self-destructive streak in me, and we’d better indulge it before it takes over.”

“Go grab it,” Phil nodded after a snap resolve, the kind one gives when jumping off a diving board.

Dan stood and took the flashlight and returned with a halfway-empty bottle, but full enough to promise fun.

In the few moments of dark when he had been gone, Phil closed his eyes and tried to steady his breathing. He didn’t want Dan to think him as fumbling as he was sure he came across, even if his hands would shake.

He hadn’t spoken to anyone as pretty as Dan since he and Charlie decided that long distance simply wasn’t feasible for them. He felt his limbs alight with some kind of fluttering akin to anxiety, but much, much better. It was the kind of giddiness one thinks they’ll never feel again after a bad breakup, and is always relieved to find coursing through their veins once they’ve stopped expecting it.

“You first,” Dan begged, handing over the bottle.

“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Sure you do.”

Phil rummaged through his brain. “Well, how old are you?”

“Starting that easy?” he laughed.

They stayed for a while wading in those safe questions— ages (Dan: 22, Phil: 26), hometowns (Dan: Wokingham, Phil: Rawtenstall), how long they’ve been in Manchester (Dan: half a year, Phil: four years) — before they started giving answers that weren’t automatic responses.

“How’d you end up in the north?” Phil asked.

The story spilt out easily enough. Dan’s a pianist. A fledgeling pianist. He’s up here getting a supplemental degree in music theory, even though it has nothing to do with the law degree he earned last year. “Barely,” he said. “Barely earned it. I could do the work fine when I wanted to, but I really didn’t want to. I don’t actually want to be a lawyer.”

This supplemental degree was his attempt to keep a career in law at bay, and to see a little more than his hometown and the small uni he’d attended the first time around.

His girlfriend wasn’t happy about his leaving. She’s ready to marry him. She says Dan could keep his music hobby all he likes while holding a real job. “She has a point, I guess. Says music isn’t something I need school for, you either have it or you don’t. Like writing or cooking or painting.”

“I don’t know about that,” Phil shrugged. “My auntie used to say ‘it can’t do any harm, and it might do some good.’ She was talking about washing dishes before putting them in the machine, but I guess the idea’s the same.”

Dan nodded. “That’s what I figured when I decided to come up here anyway.” He takes a deep drink of rum and Phil notices just how long his neck is. “Sometimes, after a rough day, I tell myself I’ll give it all up, go back and marry her. Not bloody likely considering if I had the nerve to quit I would’ve dropped out of law. But still, it’s nice to have an escape route ready.”

“I guess so,” Phil allowed, only he didn’t see it as an escape route. That this girlfriend had called Dan’s music a hobby stuck out to him. It left the promised escape route looking far more like a trap than anything.

But maybe that isn’t fair, Phil figured. He doesn’t know the girl. Doesn’t know anything about her.

Dan went for the same question: why Manchester?

“I got a masters in video post-production that I put to use in freelance, so I guess really I could go anywhere— but I grew up in the area, and the city is a nice compromise because it wasn’t exactly the same as moving back home after uni,” Phil said. “I wanted somewhere big enough that I could, I dunno, find myself…” He laughs.

“Did you find yourself?” Dan fiddled with his earring again as he asked.

Phil shrugged. “Close enough, I guess. Would like to afford a proper flat one of these days though.”

They asked a couple questions that were a little less safe: their first great disappointment, if they’d ever been to a Muse concert, the story of the first time they got rip-roaring drunk. Things that were very personal, and which felt heightened by how impersonal all their other interactions before this night had always been. The night grew later, but felt much longer than any other night they’d known. The wind outside kept up.

The more Phil learned about Dan as they kept trading questions, the more he liked him.

The guy was gorgeous to begin with, but he also played a lot of the same video games as Phil, and he spoke as passionately about music as Phil did about horror films, and he laughed at Phil’s pained puns while throwing several back at him to match.

They just had really similar energies, similar enough to mesh seamlessly. He was a stranger, sure, but he wasn’t unfamiliar. Phil wanted to keep learning, to gain as many little Dan-facts as he possibly could and file them away in his brain.

Lavender jumped down from the top of Phil’s bookshelf to nudge his arm with her face. If Phil didn’t know any better, he’d say she was jealous of all the attention he was paying to Dan instead of her.

More likely, he figured, he was just anthropomorphizing her too much. He tends to do that.

“Hello there,” Dan said in the softest voice Phil had ever heard in his life. “What’s your name?” he asked, leaning nearly out of the wingback and holding his hand out towards the cat.

Phil noticed then the size of Dan’s hands. Fuck. Why’d he have to notice that? And is any facet of this bloke not maddeningly sexy? “This is Lavender,” he said, clearing his throat. “She’s a glutton for attention.”

“What cat isn’t?” Dan laughed. Lavender nudged her head against Dan’s fingers and he scratched behind her ears. “How long you had her for?”

“Couple years now. Cats are basically the best coping mechanisms for anxiety I’ve come across. I used to just spend hours at that cat café in midtown before adopting her. It’s the purrs.”

“Never had a cat,” Dan says. “My family had a dog though, and my girlfriend’s parents got a cat maybe a year ago.”

Phil bristled at another mention of the girlfriend, but he hoped Dan couldn’t tell because him feeling jealousy towards this man he doesn’t know and can’t make any claims for is so… well… stupid? Just downright stupid.

“Their cat loves me,” Dan continued. “Most pets do. I run really warm, and most of them just fall right asleep if I hold them.”

“I’d believe that,” Phil said, uncrossing his legs and gathering Lavender in his arms to deposit in Dan’s lap. He brushed against Dan’s arms in the process, and Dan was right— he’s so warm. Phil muses that he even smells like warm.

“Where’s her sweet spot?” Dan asked, his dimples hidden from the flashlight as he looks down at Lavender.

“Here,” Phil said, stroking a finger up between Lavender’s eyes and above her nose. “Give her a scritch.”

Dan did, and Lavender’s content purrs joined the surrounding noise that filled what would be a very quiet flat; joined the wind and rain and pleasant static that hung between Phil and his guest.

“Ask me a question,” Phil said after they both took another sip of rum.

“Is there a bird, back home or somewhere,” Dan asked with a theatric hand on his heart and a sweeping sort of voice, “who was heartbroken when you went away?”

Phil wanted to laugh because he wasn’t sure what else to do, but instead reached for the bottle of Malibu and drank deep.

It wasn’t empty, but it was getting mighty close.

They had both agreed that if there was a question one of them simply didn’t want to answer they had to pay with a righteous swig. That didn’t, of course, stop them from taking frequent swigs that had nothing to do with the questions they wanted to avoid.

“Tell me something you can’t do,” Phil asked, hoping to distract Dan from his lack of an answer.

“I can’t dance.”

“You can’t dance?”

Dan shook his head.

Phil stood and bumbled in the dark towards his bookshelf in the corner. He reached for a music box in the shape of a certain robot, with one of the hands glued roughly back on after it had broken off when sent to him through the post.

The plinking music filled the room. It was an old Broadway number, but he didn’t really know much about it in its original context. Dan laughed from the other side of the room and the chime made Phil’s chest tighten.

“Is that the _Hello Dolly_ song they played in _Wall-E_?” Dan asked.

“Oh good,” Phil laughed, turning back around, “you’re a man of taste.”

Now that he was standing, Phil was feeling the liquor stronger than he had before; he felt it in the arches of his feet, in the palms of his hands. He reached out to Dan, Lavender falling from his lap as he pulled him up. He insisted that he was about to teach Dan how to dance. Phil couldn’t really dance himself, and this music box was so much more old-fashioned than anything Dan could have meant, but was that really the point?

“Take the lead and teach me your best,” Dan laughed. “It’ll be one less thing I can’t do.”

They laughed a great deal more than they really danced; it was too dark to keep from stumbling over the different messes scattered on Phil’s floor. Lavender avoided them entirely, not trusting their balance.

Phil was deeply conscious of his hand at Dan’s waist, mildly surprised that Dan didn’t seem to mind it, not daring to adjust it— hoping to the god his mum believes in and any other potential deity who might listen that Dan didn’t think he was overstepping the boundaries Phil lived his life being keenly aware of.

They took deep, sloppy swigs of Malibu while they pretended to dance.

Dan asked Phil to sing along to the music box’s song for him, if he knew the words.

Phil chose to say them with enough rhythm so they came out like spoken-word poetry, not confident enough even in his drunken state to sing in earnest. He wouldn’t look at Dan when he did so, but made a theatrical attempt to stare into the middle distance.

It kept Dan laughing, which Phil had realized over the course of the night was his ultimate goal.

 _He held me for an instant— But his arms felt safe and strong— It only takes a moment— To be loved a whole life long—_ The plinking slowed and stopped, and Phil wondered if he should wind the music box again, but Dan was holding onto his shoulder so tightly he worried that Dan was feeling a little too drunk and dizzy for him to let go.

“Is that all you know?” Dan asked with a voice dripping in clarity.

The loss of the music box had tricked them into thinking the room was silent, but it wasn’t of course. There was still the wind howling and rattling the tree branches, there was still rain pelting the rooftop, there was still Lavender playing with a toy mouse on the bed.

But Dan’s question broke the perceived silence, and Phil finished up the song.

 _And that is all— That love’s about— And we’ll recall— When time runs out— That it only took a moment— To be loved a whole life long—_ Dan had joined in the rhythmic recitation for the final two lines, and Phil was trying desperately not to fold into himself due to the heavy-handedness of the moment he now found himself in.

Their heads were foggy, and they stilled and separated.

“Can’t believe I’ve been a natural dancer all these years,” Dan said as he hopped back to the chair he had claimed as his own for the night and fell into it with a laugh.

Phil felt rooted to the spot, feeling the world couldn’t be turning solely because of the sheer amount of Malibu burning in his veins. Surely some of it could be attributed to Earth’s momentum. His arms hung limp, his hands curled but not fists. He almost wondered if they had never danced at all.

“Ask me a question, Dan.”

“Ask me one yourself,” he said and smiled.

Phil moved back over to his bed and sat with his legs dangling over the edge.

“You really think you’ll ever play the piano again if you actually go through with leaving one day?” he asked, suddenly overwhelmed and tired.

He wanted everything to happen all at once, before the lights came back on and their consequence-free stolen hours were over. He was electric, afraid and eager and exceedingly nervous.

He wanted to know who Dan was entirely, even if this was the first time they’d sat and spoke.

He wanted Dan to know who he was and fall unabashedly for him anyway.

He wanted all their flaws absolved and wiped away. He wanted to never have to hear about this girlfriend back in Wokingham again despite the fact that he had just brought her up himself. And if everything couldn’t happen all at once, he felt it might as well tear itself to shreds, whatever it was.

“What the hell does that mean?” Dan asked. His voice was stilted; he had stiffened.

“I guess I mean that right now, music is the most important thing to you. And if you leave, even if you mean to keep playing, but if you leave for some girl, you’re proving to yourself that it isn’t. That she’s the most important thing. And I’m asking if you really think you’ll ever play the piano again, in the same way, if you bump it down your list like that.” Phil focused on the shape of his words as he spoke, trying to keep as much petulance out of his tone.

Because even if he was being selfish, he knew he was also right.

Dan reached for the Malibu and wouldn’t look at him.

“No, no,” Phil said, “don’t cop out, answer the question.”

“The rule was we could drink instead,” Dan pushed, sipping.

“Doesn’t matter,” Phil said. “We made those rules up.”

Dan tilted his head; he seemed surprised that Phil was challenging him and irritated by both the surprise and the challenge. “The rule counted when _you_ didn’t want to answer.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Phil said again. He tried to smile, not wanting to be quite so cruel as he felt he was being, but the smile felt hollow and even with Dan being only a stranger Phil figured he’d still be able to tell. “I don’t even remember what that question was by now. Answer mine.”

There was a tense, quiet moment filled only with the windstorm, which suddenly seemed to match their moods.

They were alone in Manchester, they were alone in the storm, two rafts tethered by one cable and both of them seemed to be hacking at the line with all their might. The open window wasn’t doing enough to rid the room of its static electricity, though it had been doing just fine earlier.

“Of course I’ll still play,” Dan nodded.

Phil laughed then; a laugh that startled him. “You said you were always honest.”

“You don’t even know her,” Dan said.

“I don’t even know you.”

“That’s right. You don’t.” Dan’s voice had a crack from either anger or tears, Phil couldn’t tell which in the haze of half-light and intoxication, but he was terrified of either option.

Phil was ready to apologize, but some anxious hold on his throat kept him from doing so.

“She’s not some girl,” Dan said after another stagnant moment. He sounded like he was trying to convince himself. Or maybe Phil only hoped he did.

“Maybe not,” Phil allowed. 

Lavender jumped back into Phil’s lap; her meow was mournful because in the chaos of his arrival home Phil hadn’t remembered to fill her food bowl, but the mournfulness felt as though it could have been for the shattered camaraderie. The unearned easiness which both Dan and Phil had relied on was replaced with tension, a tension that rang in their ears.

Phil stood and dropped Lavender onto Dan’s lap: an unspoken apology. He then stepped with clumsy feet to refill their abandoned empty glasses with dandelion wine.

Dan accepted his glass with a crooked smile. “What’s in the boxes?” he asked, nodding towards the two heavy packages which Phil had been wrangling with all those hours before when he came to his rescue.

“Don’t know, I haven’t opened them,” Phil said.

He had a faint idea of what they might be.

One was from his mum and probably had a specific tea from a shop near their home on the Isle of Man, a roughly knit something that was sent with more love than skill, £60 in fivers that he wasn’t supposed to tell his father about, bric-a-brac that he loved for its kitsch but for which he was slowly running out of room in the tiny flat. The sort of things he had come to expect in care packages from home.

The other package didn’t have a return address, but he recognized the sloping handwriting that spelt out his own name, and he didn’t have any intention of opening an unexpected package from Charlie while Dan was around.

Both men were quiet for some time, digesting liquor and ideas.

The tension was slowly replaced with something else; not the same early easiness, but something almost crucial.

“Ask me a question,” Phil said when his wineglass was again empty, even though it was his turn. Dan didn’t seem to notice.

“Have you ever felt entirely in love with someone?” Dan asked, his voice raw and punctuated with the mixed vices, which almost justified the melodrama of the question. “As though your happiness depended on their existence?”

His face was still half in shadow and his shoulders were hunched in a way that could have been misunderstood as menacing, but in reality was overwhelmingly vulnerable.

“No,” Phil answered without hesitation. Something about the very concept terrified him. He shook his head, but he was half in shadow as well, and the effect with his movement was that most of him was lost.

Phil grabbed the bottle of Malibu and found it to be bone dry, but he couldn’t remember which of them had polished it off.

“Me neither.” Dan stuck a hand out the open window and into the howling night. The shift brought him further into the flashlight’s coverage. “Thank god,” he finished, and Phil nearly loved him then and there for it.

Phil thought he was pure warmth, even though the August night was cooler than usual with the storm. Dan was a little radiator. He looked golden in the flashlight’s outer ring, and his edges and outline seemed undefined. He looked ethereal and illustrated, and Phil wanted to be sure of him— to prove that he was real, and whole, and there, because at that moment he wasn’t entirely sure.

Then he heard a buzzing that was distinctly different from the buzzing that had been going constant in his brain all night. It was faint and distant and finally ended in the lights clicking on.

It felt like the opposite of a gasp.

He realized then how much distance there was between them; it hadn’t felt like that a moment ago.

It was only after the chance was gone that Phil realized he had meant to kiss him.

If the lights had stayed off for another heartbeat or so, he would have bumbled over and caught Dan up in a kiss, the kind of chaotic kiss that can only taste of rum and recklessness. And maybe it would’ve been a mistake, but he would’ve done it anyway.

But the moment had passed by, and their stolen hours looked exposed and bare and ugly in the heavy yellow light from Phil’s standing lamp.

Dan seemed to be jolted awake by the light too. He seemed to be looking at Phil like he hadn’t actually seen him before, and Phil wondered if the muted light had done him too many favours, made him seem mysteriously attractive in a way he couldn’t possibly be when fully visible.

“Guess _Twilight Zone_ is over.” Dan’s slow smile began.

“Rod Serling isn’t here to give a monologue.”

“What do you think he’d say?”

“Something about censorship or war,” Phil offered. “Or extending kindness to your fellow man.”

This made Dan smile all the more. Then the smile hung there, stagnant. Phil was afraid of what was going to happen when it went away.

Dan leaned forward and clicked the flashlight off, since it wasn’t needed anymore.

*

It wasn’t until five days later that Phil saw Dan again, walking on the street three stories below while Phil sat on his balcony reading Stephen King’s memoir.

The book had been in the farewell package from Charlie. There was a note on the inside of the front cover wishing him a happy birthday, which was fair even if it was August and Phil’s birthday had been back in January. They’d ended things about two weeks after last Christmas, and Phil figured Charlie had the book lying around all this time and wanted to get rid of it with the rest of Phil’s things he had finally sent along.

The storm had left the city feeling cleaned out. The wind had blown all the old leaves away and left the sidewalks barer than they ever get.

But August’s sluggish humid haze had fallen down again, the haze that lingers because the cooling misty rains the city sees the rest of the year are on vacation.

As he read, Phil wanted, not for the first or last time, Stephen King’s courage.

He wanted his raw, reckless optimism that caused him to be so freaking productive by throwing everything he had on the table. He wanted the courage to start… something with Dan, even if the scariest moment is always just before you start. He wanted to believe King when he said _You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will_ , even if King was talking about the craft of writing and Phil was looking to be brave enough for something quite different.

He wanted the same sort of freedom they had been granted by a windstorm, the permission to cut corners and dive straight into immediacy and intimacy and truth.

He wanted to know Dan more, to know him entirely, down to the intricacies of his cells. And he didn’t feel he had the right. Not just yet.

Then he saw Dan reach their building’s front door, and he glanced up while fishing out his keys to see Phil leaned over the railing above him. He held up a hand, waving, and Phil felt a blush in his cheeks he was grateful Dan couldn’t possibly see from this distance. He waved back, already a little more optimistic.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading — come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/181872367389/a-self-destructive-streak) !


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